


Thorned

by les_etoilles



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Clone Wars, F/M, Hanahaki Disease, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Muteness, Pining, Slow Romance, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 17:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20531528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/les_etoilles/pseuds/les_etoilles
Summary: “Hanahaki disease,” he says. “A hereditary illness from my home planet.”“So you’re dying?” Anakin’s lost on the details, but that thought terrifies him. Master Qui-Gon already died; if Obi-Wan dies too, who will train him?Obi-Wan closes his eyes briefly, painfully, and shakes his head. “Not anymore.”





	Thorned

When Anakin meets Obi-Wan for the first time, he is quiet. Silent, actually. He smiles, with his soft pink lips, his blue eyes kind but sad, and Anakin thinks maybe he was wrong after all. If Padmé is an angel, then Obi-Wan is…well, he doesn’t know. He’s only heard the old pilots talk about angels, but he’s sure there’s something out there in the big, wide galaxy that must come close.

Master Qui-Gon doesn’t seem to mind that Obi-Wan doesn’t talk. They communicate, though Anakin can’t see how. Wherever Master Qui-Gon goes, Obi-Wan is right beside him, like a shadow or a ghost. He seems to anticipate Qui-Gon’s needs before they can even be spoken. And when Qui-Gon looks at him, surprised, maybe, or grateful, the sadness vanishes from his eyes and they shine like the brightest stars in the sky.

Anakin is nine, and he thinks that maybe this is just how a Master and Padawan are supposed to be.

But the day after the funeral, he enters their new quarters—_in the Jedi Temple!_—and finds pretty pink petals strewn across the room.

“Master?”

Obi-Wan still hasn’t said a word to him, not once, not ever, but he can hear him retching in the refresher. He should leave him alone and let him have his privacy, but curiosity killed the loth-cat as they say, so he tiptoes closer until he can see Obi-Wan through the unshut refresher door.

He’s on his knees, sobbing, choking, hundreds of soft petals, and bigger, twisted flowers gushing from his mouth with every painful gag.

Anakin does the only thing he can think of. He runs to get the Healer.

—

“Hanahaki disease,” he says, in a beautifully cultured, if a little hoarse, voice that is _perfectly_ Obi-Wan. “A hereditary illness from my home planet.”

“So you’re dying?” Anakin’s lost on the details, but that thought terrifies him. Master Qui-Gon already died; if Obi-Wan dies too, who will train him?

Obi-Wan closes his eyes briefly, painfully, and shakes his head. “Not anymore.”

—

They never speak of it again. Obi-Wan recovers, and Anakin’s training intensifies until he can think of nothing but lightsaber forms and how deeply, _viscerally_ he hates meditating. Obi-Wan lectures him day-in and day-out, on anything and everything, and sometimes, briefly, Anakin wishes he was still mute.

He marries Padmé like he knew he always would, the galaxy is plunged into war, and then there’s no time to think of anything else except staying alive and catching Dooku.

He’s all but forgotten about Hanahaki, until one morning on _The Resolute_ when he finds Obi-Wan bent over the toilet in the refresher, dry-heaving.

“Master?” He asks, although Obi-Wan hasn’t been his master in over a year. “Are you all right?”

“Perfectly fine,” the older man wheezes, suddenly upright, dabbing at the saliva at the corners of his mouth. “I never could handle Sixer’s cooking.”

“It’s because you have no taste for fine cuisine, Master,” he teases. Something passes across Obi-Wan’s face that he doesn’t understand, but it’s gone so quickly he thinks he must’ve imagined it.

“I’d hate to see your version of _basic_ cuisine,” he quips, as his master always does, leading the way back to the bridge. It’s only when Anakin catches sight of a thorned stem in the corner that he remembers something is wrong.

—

This time he does his research, and what he finds makes his blood boil.

“You _love_ someone,” he accuses viciously, the heat of rage making him burn. “After all those lectures on attachment! _You_—of all people!”

“Anakin, I can explain…”

But he doesn’t want to hear it. He’s glad that Obi-Wan is on the other side of the room and not next to him, because he doesn’t trust himself not to strike out against him.

“_Don’t_,” he snarls. And perhaps he says it frighteningly, because Obi-Wan shuts up. “You hypocrite. You_ lied_ to _me_.”

Obi-Wan doesn’t reply. It reminds him of their first meeting.

“So who is it then?” he snaps, clenching his metal hand into a fist. “Who’s special enough to make _Perfect Obi-Wan_ break the Jedi Code?”

He knows this is wrong; he should be sympathetic. He should _care_. Obi-Wan could die from this. But it’s like a great beast has awakened within him, and the words that come out of his mouth are said in his voice but they don’t belong to him.

“That is absolutely none of your business.” His words are harsh, clipped, but they just spur Anakin further.

“It was Qui-Gon before, right—I should’ve known—the way you looked at him. So is it someone on the Council? And here I thought they all had lightsabers up their asses…or is it Master Muln? Healer Eerin? Can humans and Mon Calamari even—“

“I am not having this conversation with you, Anakin.”

He’s never sounded so cold, so—angry. It stops the words tumbling from his lips. He expects to find a whirlwind of rage in his cerulean eyes, but he’s just sad. Sad and weary in a way he’s never looked before. This war has taken so much from them, and now it’s going to take Obi-Wan too.

“I—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—“

“No, you shouldn’t have,” he agrees.

The anger vanishes. He feels weak; he hangs his head, contrite. “You could…tell me about them. I wouldn’t get angry. Again.”

Obi-Wan is quiet for a long moment. “I’d rather not.”

Anakin bites his lip and tries a different tactic. “Did Qui-Gon…?”

He sighs with the reluctance of surrender. “He was my master. And twice my age. He would never have taken advantage of me like that.”

“But you were dying!”

“We all die someday, Anakin,” he says softly, sadly.

And Anakin realizes. Obi-Wan _is_ dying. Now. In front of him. Everything he’s read says that the flowers have to be removed, if the love isn’t reciprocated. Otherwise they’ll suffocate him slowly, growing inside his lungs until he can no longer breathe.

“You’re going to get them removed, right? Because if they don’t love you back, then they don’t deserve your love. And they don’t deserve to have you die for them. The galaxy needs you, Obi-Wan. I—_I _need you.”

“It’s a difficult decision to make…” he says haltingly. But Anakin knows; he can see it in his eyes. He’s already made his choice. He’s chosen the unrequited love of someone else over Anakin.

That hurts worse than anything.

—

Hanahaki is slow, but the war speeds it up. He wakes every morning to his master doubled over, choking on broken stems and thorns. Sometimes there’s blood, when the thorns tear his throat. It stains his lips pretty pink, like the cherry blossoms he used to cough up. A flower from Qui-Gon’s homeworld, he finally admits, several months later.

Anakin looks at the stems, the thorns, and tries to piece together Obi-Wan’s mysterious, unrequited love. But there are too many thorned flowers in the archives, and he’s yet to see the color of the petals to narrow his search. He gives up for now, but not for good. When he finds out who it is, he’s going to make them love Obi-Wan, even if he has to use the Force to do so.

“It’s unfair,” he tells Padmé one night, on one of his rare retreats from the war. “Why won’t he just get the surgery?”

“You can’t tell someone how to love, Ani,” she says sweetly, her hand on his flesh arm. “If you were dying and forgetting me could save you, would you?”

“Of course not,” he says immediately. “I’d die first.”

“Then why should it be any different for Obi-Wan?”

—

He tries opening up to Obi-Wan after that. He tells him about Padmé and is surprised to find that he already knew. It’s easier now, without so many secrets between them. Except the one. He wishes it could’ve been like this throughout his Padawanship. It’s cruel that it comes now, at the end, when Anakin is matured and their friendship strong.

Obi-Wan still refuses to name his murderer (Anakin can’t think of them as anything else); he should be angry, but time is running out now. He sees it in the way Obi-Wan moves stiffly, in the coughing fits that don’t make it to the refresher: Obi-Wan is dying.

His voice goes next. One night they are fine, celebrating a victory with the 501st and 212th, and the next morning, Obi-Wan looks at him so sorrowfully that he knows he will never hear his master’s lilting voice again.

He runs to get Kix, but it doesn’t make any difference.

“They’ve taken root in the vocal chords. Even if we were to do the surgery now, I’m not sure we’d be able to remove all of it. I’m sorry, General.”

Obi-Wan waves a hand dismissively, as if to say _Oh, well._ He’s done this before, he realizes. He knows what happens next.

He sits next to him, and for the first time in his life, he doesn’t know what to say. He’s not good at false reassurances, and all the witty words he can think of die on his lips when he realizes Obi-Wan can’t respond.

So, he says instead: “You’re so selfish.” Obi-Wan doesn’t respond. Predictably. “Why are you protecting them? Master, they don’t care about you, but _I do_! You can’t leave me.”

Obi-Wan grabs a datapad from his bedside table and writes, _Learn to let go_.

“Big words coming from you,” he says bitterly.

He smiles sadly. _I know._

—

They still fight. And they still win. They communicate through their bond and using Clone sign language. They are practically one person now, so in tune with the other that they think the same thoughts, make the same moves. Anakin jokes that Obi-Wan should’ve lost his voice years ago.

Then Obi-Wan collapses in the middle of a battle, coughing up buckets of blood. On the ground beneath him is a perfectly whole thorned vera, the only flower native to Tatooine.

And he knows, then. He _knows_.

He’s killed Obi-Wan.

—

“You should’ve told me,” he hisses. The Halls of Healing are too quiet as it is, and his voice echoes too well.

_It was not your burden to bear, _he signs. Even in another language, he still sounds like Obi-Wan.

“Like _Sith hells _it isn’t! You almost died! You _will_ die, if—if—“ He stumbles. Obi-Wan watches him patiently.

He surges forward and presses his mouth against his, too hard, with too much teeth, too much desperation. Obi-Wan’s eyes flutter and his lips part, inviting him in. He claims his mouth with brutal need and curls his hands into his master’s hair, clinging to him like he can keep him alive through sheer force of will.

It’s minutes before they part, or days, Anakin isn’t sure. He looks at Obi-Wan expectantly.

He shakes his head. _It doesn’t work like that, Anakin_.

“It has to,” he demands, grinding his teeth. “I_ love _you.”

_Sometimes love isn’t enough_.

He thinks there’s a lesson in there somewhere, but he’s too angry to find it.

—

“I overheard Healer Che telling him he only has days left,” says Ahsoka, as she hurriedly follows him down the corridor. “But I thought you told him you loved him! I thought our plan would work, Master.”

“So did I,” he says, choking on an invisible flower of his own.

“What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know.” The chrono is ticking down, and they have no last-ditch attempt, no fallback play this time. He’s not strong enough to save him.

—

That night, he curls himself into Padmé’s lap and sobs like the frightened child she met years ago. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t—I can’t lose him.”

“You love him,” she says, not unkindly. And not a question. She’s always been perceptive.

He nods guiltily. He knows it’s not fair to her.

“And you love me.” Still not a question. He nods again. She strokes her fingers through his hair soothingly, quiet, thinking. Finally, she says, “We’ll find a way to save him.” They are useless words now, at the end, but he appreciates them all the same. They are acceptance, and forgiveness.

—

His comm beeps at 0300, Ahsoka frantic on the other line. “Master, please, come quick—Obi-Wan—“

He doesn’t wait for her to finish. He races to the Jedi Temple as fast as his speeder will go, but he’s too late. There are thorns and vera flowers everywhere; blood is splattered across Obi-Wan’s beard, his chest, his robes, and his pale—too pale—face. The machines that monitor his vitals are eerily quiet.

“Obi-Wan?” he whimpers as he steps into the room. Ahsoka is there, her large eyes wet with fresh tears. Healer Che bows her head regretfully.

“Knight Skywalker, I’m afraid—“

“_No_,” he snarls, with rage enough to shake the Temple to its core. “He’s _not_—he _wouldn’t_—he _can’t_—“

He yanks Obi-Wan’s body upright and grips him painfully tight. “You’re not allowed to kriffing die, you hear me? Obi-Wan! This is _Sithspit_ and you know it! You can’t leave me, all right? You—you can’t—“

But Obi-Wan doesn’t respond. His head lolls backwards, his unseeing blue eyes stare up at the ceiling. Something inside him breaks.

“Master, please…I love you, please, _please_—“

He screams, several vials shattering as pulses of power rush out of him. He curls himself around Obi-Wan. He doesn’t care if he takes down this whole building. Obi-Wan is gone and he’s never coming back. He’ll never hear him laugh, never see him smile. He’ll never get to tell him that he’s sorry, that he should’ve been a better student, he should’ve listened and learned and loved him better. It’s too late. It’s all too late and he wasn’t even here when it happened; he didn’t even get to say _goodbye—_

The meddroid beside Healer Che beeps in surprise. “Vital signs returning.”

The quiet rhythmic beeping on the heart monitor grows louder, steadier. Healer Che rushes to the monitor and places two fingers against his neck. “He’s alive,” she says, faintly.

“What?”

She doesn’t get a chance to answer. Obi-Wan is squirming in his arms, his eyes flutter, and Anakin stares as those stunning cerulean eyes find him, not dead and dull but very much alive. He opens his mouth to speak in a hoarse whisper:

“_Anakin_.”

—

Anakin doesn’t untangle himself from Obi-Wan, not even when Masters Yoda and Windu show up, looking as shocked as he feels. Windu, especially, looks at him with something akin to loathing, but whatever he thinks, he keeps to himself.

Obi-Wan is sitting up now, the blood wiped clean from his face, though pale death still lingers on his skin. It just makes Anakin curl his hand into his tunic tighter.

Yoda sits in the chair Anakin should be occupying, if he was a good, proper Jedi. “How came this to be, Obi-Wan?”

“I’ve been doing research,” he says quietly, tiredly. He reeks of exhaustion but Anakin knows he won’t dismiss the Grand Master of the Jedi Order for a few minutes of shut eye. “There were rumors of…an alternate recovery. If I could, learn to make peace with my death, if I could learn to—to let Anakin go—“ This time Windu does make a derisive noise. “—Then my body would slip into a coma, and the disease would expel itself. It was risky, and the only true research I had to follow was that of another Jedi a thousand years ago. But it was a chance I had to take.”

“You should’ve told me,” says Anakin, sulking, before Yoda can respond.

“I couldn’t give you hope if there was none to be had,” he says softly, pressing the warm pads of his fingers to his cheek. “You see, it was never about whether or not you loved me, Anakin. I couldn’t bear to give you up. I loved you too selfishly. As your master, as your friend, as—more. I had to learn to let you go.”

“A hard lesson that is indeed,” hums Yoda, stroking his chin. “The lesson of the Jedi. Too few of us can conquer it, yes. Attachment, dangerous it can be, if one fails.”

“And against the Code,” adds Windu, frowning deeply.

“I understand, Masters,” says Obi-Wan wearily, inclining his head. “I will accept whatever punishment the Council sees fit.”

“A hard lesson you have already learned, Obi-Wan,” says Yoda. “Punishment you need not. Welcome, you are, to return to the Council. Your place among us, you have not lost.”

Anakin sees his relief hidden in the trembling of his tired body. He opens his mouth to tell them to leave, when Yoda huffs and pokes him with his gimer stick. “And lesson you did learn also, young one? The fear of loss, dangerous, is it not? Helplessness, powerlessness, you have faced. What say you about these?”

He raises his chin challengingly, unafraid. He will never be afraid of anything, after all of this. “I don’t pretend to be the perfect Jedi, Masters. I love others, and I won’t stop. But it doesn’t make me weak. I’m stronger because of those I love. And if you want to expel me from the Order, then fine. But I won’t stop loving them. I’d rather die.”

Yoda regards him for several long, quite minutes. Obi-Wan’s hand tightens around his. He can feel his emotions in the Force, his shields too weak to keep them from him. There is fear, and worry, but mostly—pride, and love, for Anakin, for the man he’s become.

“Stronger together, I agree. Seen it I have, these last few months. One being in the Force, you are. Without the other, like a lost limb you become. Meditate on this, I will.”

And then they leave, almost too easily. He can’t believe that after all these years, after all the worry and hiding and sneaking around, that it could be that easy. Ahsoka leaves too, to give them privacy, muttering something about an essay he knows she’s already written.

They are alone, together, finally. There are a million things he wants to say, but Obi-Wan looks on the brink of exhaustion, so he kisses him, more gently than he ever has before, and uses a Force suggestion to lull him to sleep. There is time now, after all. So much more time.


End file.
